The Generals commanding the Looshai expedition seem to be in
a perplexity of a somewhat novel character. General Bourchier telegraphs on January 4, from some place not stated, that he had entered the hills, that they are very precipitous, but that the Looshais are coming into camp to exchange fowls and vegetables for salt, are civil and quiet, and "are not at all the savages expected." It is possible that there is a tame as well as a wild section of the tribe, some branches of which have certainly a taste for cutting off human heads,—but the telegram certainly seems to justify what we have always affirmed, that a sharp Civil officer, with three hundred picked Soothe's, and fifty white sailors hired in Calcutta, would have soon brought the Looshais to agree to reasonable terms, say a grant of £10 a year to each chief so long as he helped travellers, protected traders, and prevented the seizure of human skulls. People who grow fowls and want salt and understand a bargain can almost always be managed without an advance of costly columns, who have to cut every step through otherwise impenetrable jungles. What makes the Looshais so much worse than the Bheels ? and why will they not do for frontier Police?
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